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Dessert

Baked Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with lemon rind, sugar, water, butter, cornflour, eggs, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the lemon base

  1. Grate the rinds of the lemons and boil them with sugar and water.

  2. Mix cornflour with lemon juice to form a smooth paste; add to the lemon water and stir over heat until thick.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs and the butter together, then mix with the other ingredients and stir thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pie dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks with 2 tablespoons of sugar, then shape on top of the pudding and lightly brown.

  4. Serve cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites form the meringue topping.
Cornflour
Starch thickens the lemon liquid into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the egg whites hold stiff peaks.
Lemons
Rind and juice supply the aroma and sharp acidity of the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooling before combining. The cornflour mixture must cool before the egg yolks and butter are stirred in, because heat can scramble the yolks and cause the mixture to curdle or lose its smooth texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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